Red Poppies
by HeayPuckett
Summary: Molly Hooper likes to wear the same poppy covered dress to every christening she attends. Here's why.


Hello! No ships in this one, per se, except Molly Hooper's parents and my love of Molly's clothes.

This has not been beta read as this was a very spur of the ficlet. I haven't had anything for my beta reader, Stormweaver, to look at for a LONG time, so I didn't want to spring this on her this close to a holiday.

I was inspired by Molly's dress for the christening of Baby Watson (check Tumblr for a pic) and realized my idea would pair well with something I wrote a while back and never finished. I've headcanoned Molly's mother's name as Poppy. I think the flowers on her dress are red poppies (my eyesight is awful and the photo I looked at is smallll), so voila!. The beginning was supposed to be part of a longer fic about Molly and her dad, but I've never gotten past the first chapter.

This is a standalone that has nothing to do with the universes I created for my other fics. Molly-centric. Hope you enjoy!

Through the dancing poppies stole

A breeze most softly lulling to my soul.

~John Keats

—

Robert Hooper was the sort of soft-spoken, sensitive person that perfectly fit the stereotype of a London bookshop owner. He was average height and tended towards a lankiness that would be called gangly on someone slightly taller. He prided himself on being able to find the perfect book for every customer who entered his shop. Whether it was what the customer was in search of originally or not, Robert could match the reader to the book with extraordinary accuracy.

Robert was at once quite ordinary and a hopeless romantic. He had the same dreams of romance and family as the next person. Images of future little ones perched on his knee as he read to them were dearly cherished. Thoughts of sharing quiet conversation at the end of a long day with a kind, intelligent woman kept him warm on cold, lonely nights. The tragedy of his existence was that, in spite of the deep reservoirs of affection and passion buried in his heart, Love had left Robert on the shelf.

In his late forties, Robert quietly and painfully gave up the idea of being a father. If he married, as he still hoped, it would most likely be to a widow looking for companionship, not more children. So he clung to the idea of being a friend and step-grandfather. By age fifty, he knew even that hope was fading. His books, always the central purpose of his life, became his baby to be doted upon and handled with care. He resigned himself to a solitary life guiding students through their first purchases of classics, presenting young readers with their first really-real-no-pictures-or-popups books and discussing new releases with fellow bibliophiles.

Fate, as it turned out, was not done with Robert Hooper, merely biding time. One day, in a scene even the most creative of the Romantics would not have envisioned, Robert met the love of his life.

Poppy Naracott stormed into the Hooper bookshop and Robert's life on a typically rainy Autumn day. She had spiky blonde hair, a Marc Chegall print umbrella and a desperate need for a copy of a rare, out-of-print work on mathematical theory. Unfortunately, she could remember neither the title nor author, other than the former was dull and the latter was a woman. Instead, she rattled off the complexities and conclusions of the thesis in hopes that Robert would be able to tell what she was talking about.

"I had a copy, see, but I had to use it on this bloke on the tube. He got a little too fresh, if you follow, and I had to kosh 'im with it. Did the trick, but it was an old copy I got from a mate and the cover was loose so when I hit 'im with it, woosh! half the cover come off and the pages scattered everywhere, and people were tramping all over it and I was only halfaway done! It was the best part, too! I don't suppose you know math well enough to find it for me? I know it's a long shot, but this was the best I've read and I don't know what else to do! Can you help?"

Robert blinked, held up one finger, and bustled to the shelves devoted to math and engineering. He plucked a pristine edition of the treatise off the third shelf from the bottom, returned to the counter and presented the copy to the overwrought young woman. Quietly, Poppy took the book, stared at it, stared at him, and proceeded to kiss Robert Hooper more soundly than he had ever been kissed before. It was the first of many such kisses.

To rush into a relationship with a stranger was insane, he knew. The age difference wasn't quite what he had feared upon first meeting. Poppy was at university, but working on an advanced degree in biochemistry. She was just turning thirty to his fifty-four, so not really so objectionable. Honestly, most of Robert's friends balked more at the explosive contrast in personalities. Poppy was loud and Robert was soft- both in personality and appearance- but they really weren't that different once one looked past the surface.

They were both full of surprising contrasts. Poppy liked puppies and Proust and could break down the chemical composition of her Pink Dream nail polish. Robert could produce a literary quote for any occasion, without resorting to Shakespeare; explain the intricacies of ancient Roman plumbing; and bake a passable treacle tart. They were, in short, perfect for each other.

Two weeks after the fateful meeting at Robert's bookstore -during which he alternately cursed himself for not asking for Poppy's phone number and being relieved that he hadn't asked- Poppy called Robert up and asked him out. He stuttered some reply, which he could not for the life of him recall later, and two Sunday's later, Poppy pulled up to his front door in an impossibly tiny car she called her "lady bug." She was wearing an extraordinary dress covered in red poppies and green vines.

"It's my christening dress," she announced proudly when he complimented the cheeriness of it, "Well, not MY christening dress, of course, it's much too big and we're Unitarians anyway. I wear it to christenings. Here we go!" While she had been explaining about her dress, she had also performed a complicated maneuver to open the passenger side door of her car that involved lifting the handle and a couple of hip checks. So it was that Robert was sitting with his knees in the vicinity of his chin and halfway to St. Paul's Cathedral before he realized his first date with Poppy was attending a christening. By the time she returned him to his one-room walkup (wearing a smile and lipstick stains on his collar), Robert had decided Poppy Noracott was the woman he was going to marry.

They were married within five weeks of their first meeting and lived in a kind of bliss that was perfect for the couple, even if it looked odd to outsiders. Robert learned to be called "Robbie" and to accept the open affection of a wife who plopped down in his lap at every opportunity. Poppy learned to be still and how to be read to, thanks mostly to her husband's mesmerizing voice. However, like many of the romances Robert had consoled himself with in his unwanted bachelorhood, his love story had a tragic end. Poppy blazed through his life like a bright flame, burning out too soon and leaving a tiny wriggling bundle of pink in her wake. Molly Hooper would only ever know her mother as a name carved on a stone and a sad smile on her daddy's face.

Molly Hooper was her father's pride and joy, in every sense of the words. She was most like him in looks, with her brown eyes and hair and more delicate build, but in her personality and intelligence, she was definitely Poppy Hooper's daughter. Beyond this, though, she had her own special spark, an ability to accept people as they were and to see good things where others would only see hardship. It was an ability that got Robert through more than one rough patch, when the years bore down and he missed his wife. Molly was always there with a cheerful smile and words of wisdom far beyond her years.

And so it was that day. The chemo was over for the time being. It would be a while before they could say if it worked. In the meantime, he was home. Molly had filled his day with quiet when he needed it and activity when the walls seemed to close in. That day they were set to attend a christening for the new baby of one of Molly's university mates. It had shocked Robert a bit that Molly had friends that were not only married, but parents as well. He realized with a pang that she was old enough to be thinking on such things, but had devoted herself to him so much that romance and children seemed to be passing her by. He hoped that she didn't take after him in that respect.

"I haven't been to a christening since yours Molly," he had chuckled when she insisted he be her escort to the event.

"It'll be fun," Molly beamed, "and you know Lakshmi and Lane think of you as their fairy godfather after you all but set them up on their first date. They will be so pleased to see you."

He couldn't refuse her, of course he couldn't, so he dug deep into his closet looking for a suit that wasn't too moth eaten for St. Paul's and instead found something that took the wind out of him. He sat on the edge of his bed heavily and ran his hand over the red and green fabric.

"I can't find anything to wear! The cleaners lost my lemon yellow skirt, so I can't wear the canary cardigan I wanted and now I don't know what to wear. I had a hat and red scarf for that and everything. Dad, help!" Molly stormed in and plopped next to her father. "Oh, that's pretty," Molly said. She was quiet for a moment and then continued softly. "Was it Mum's?"

"She wore it to every christening she attended," Rober confirmed with a nod. He chuckled as he added, "Your Mum loved christenings. She dragged me to every christening she could manage to get us into, whether we knew the family or not."

Molly reached over and took the dress out of her father's hands. She held it up to herself and looked in the mirror. "It's so pretty and the scarf I have is the same shade of red, or close enough not to make a difference."

She fluttered out of the room to change and discovered that the dress fit her almost perfectly. The matching hat was discovered to be more than a little moth eaten, so the scarf Molly had been eager to wear became a headband instead.

"And that's why this is my favourite dress to wear to christenings," Molly cooed at baby Rosamund Watson. It was eight years later and she had worn the dress to almost every christening she ever attended… and one funeral.

"Right then," Mary said with a much more relieved tone than she had exited with, "bladder relieved, ready to go! Thank you for minding her Molly."

"Anytime," Molly said, handing the lace wrapped baby over with only a smidgen of reluctance.

"Don't worry. We'll be taking advantage of your babysitting offers unashamedly, Molly," John said with a grin. Molly smiled and stood, turning to go back out to the sanctuary. She started to see Sherlock standing just inside the room, staring at her, and wondered how long he had been standing there, silently watching. She had caught him doing that a great deal lately. She wished she knew what to make of it. As Molly stole through the door, he turned and walked in step with her back down the hall.

"Your mother's name was Poppy," he said. She nodded, but he didn't elaborate until they were at the opposite end of the hall. "I knew your father was a book seller, your flat is full of books one wouldn't find in a common collection, even for an avid reader, but I didn't realize the significance of the poppies on the bookplates until now."

Molly smiled, still not really understanding what he was about. "Well, there's always something you miss, right Sherlock?"


End file.
